posted at 9:12 pm on February 1, 2011 by Allahpundit

Drudge is giving this banner treatment but I’m not sure why. Of course Al Qaeda is on the brink of a dirty bomb. Their comrades-in-arms in the Taliban are the jihadist proxy of one of the world’s biggest nuclear proliferators, aren’t they? If the filthbags in Pakistani intelligence want Al Qaeda to have nuclear material, they’ll find a way to smuggle some out of the state supply, I’m sure. In fact, according to a new piece in the NYT, Pakistan’s practically swimming in fissile material these days. Never mind the dirty bombs; how long before AQ or Lashkar e-Taiba or some other arm of Pakistan’s terror apparatus has itself a fully-functioning atomic weapon?

New American intelligence assessments have concluded that Pakistan has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal since President Obama came to office, and that it is building the capability to surge ahead in the production of nuclear-weapons material, putting it on a path to overtake Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power…

“We’ve seen a consistent, constant buildup in their inventory, but it hasn’t been a sudden rapid rise,” a senior American military official said. “We’re very, very well aware of what they’re doing.”…

But the bigger worry is the production of nuclear materials. Based on the latest estimates of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, an outside group that estimates worldwide nuclear production, experts say Pakistan has now produced enough material for 40 to 100 additional weapons, including a new class of plutonium bombs. If those estimates are correct — and some government officials regard them as high — it would put Pakistan on a par with long-established nuclear powers…

“The biggest concern of major production, to my mind, is theft from the places where the material is being handled in bulk — the plants that produce it, convert it to metal, fabricate it into bomb parts, and so on,” said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard scholar who compiles an annual report called “Securing the Bomb” for the group Nuclear Threat Initiative. “All but one of the real thefts” of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, he said, “were insider thefts from bulk-handling facilities — that’s where you can squirrel a little bit away without the loss being detected.”

Read the story being touted by Drudge and you’ll see that most of the Wikileaks docs come from 2009, which is already a different world from what’s happening in Pakistan today. Why they’re ramping up nuke production now, especially with their economy teetering, remains obscure, but according to one foreign analyst it’s simply to boast some sort of numerical advantage over their longtime nemesis India. Or maybe it’s a form of insurance against state collapse: The west will never let Pakistan crumble since it knows the consequences of letting influential lunatics in the government make off with the nuclear crown jewels. It’s precisely because Al Qaeda is perpetually on the brink of having a dirty bomb or something worse that we’re forced to be conciliatory with these cretins at all.

The other Wikileaks story being passed around tonight is more interesting and more inscrutable. Via the Telegraph, apparently there was a team of verrrry suspicious men from Qatar making some verrrry suspicious moves around the country right before 9/11. Among the remarkable coincidences: Possible surveillance of the World Trade Center shortly before the attack, “pilot-type uniforms” seen in their room by hotel housekeepers, and the fact that they were scheduled to fly from L.A. to D.C. on September 10 aboard the very same plane that ended up being steered into the Pentagon the next morning. (They ended up flying to London instead.) I’ve read the piece twice and still can’t decipher what the plot might have been. Were they going to try to use the uniforms to get past airport security somehow? No other 9/11 cell used that M.O. Were they going to plant weapons on the plane for the hijackers in D.C. to use the next morning? Again, there’s no evidence that any other cell had help like that. Maybe they were prepared to pull a hijacking of their own? But in that case, why’d they bug out to London instead of following through? All theories welcome.

Blowback

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this falls under the “carfeul what you wish for liberals. i would imagine that NYC and Dc are still the prime targets of any attack. but this places all of america at risk as well as all allies, army bases etc…..

IMO WW3 is comming. It is just a matter of time. In fact what is happing now can be seen as the same as in the carter years but it can also be seen as the years before hitler secured his power.

Allahpundit, that mushroom cloud pic on the front page is adding to the violent rhetoric and climate of hate. You are upsetting the jihadi’s. If a dirty bomb goes off somewhere … I think we all know who is to blame!!! /hopefully i dont need a sarc tag anymore

When do we reach a point in time when we discover that these Wikileak Pri$ks got some kind of credibility from the verified stolen stuff and they started injecting pure horse $hit into their releases???

Stories out there today how AQ wants to attack Wall Street executives. Comments sections at every story had people rooting them on. Democrats should feel proud their efforts at demonizing Wall Street are paying dividends.

I’ve read the piece twice and still can’t decipher what the plot might have been. Were they going to try to use the uniforms to get past airport security somehow? No other 9/11 cell used that M.O. Were they going to plant weapons on the plane for the hijackers in D.C. to use the next morning? Again, there’s no evidence that any other cell had help like that. Maybe they were prepared to pull a hijacking of their own? But in that case, why’d they bug out to London instead of following through? All theories welcome.

AQ has been handily defeated courtesy of the United States of America.

The problem we seem to face is how to deal with (in a civil manner) the leftist progressive communist marxist islamic movements that envelope us.

A measured, reasonable, thoughtful response to this attack is preferable. Make ready, and know that every single comment is now being categorized, scrutinized, analyized and sodomized. By the MSM. And, POTUS and UmChelle.

Read the story being touted by Drudge and you’ll see that most of the Wikileaks docs come from 2009,
============================================
U.S. ‘held secret meeting with Muslim Brotherhood’
Discussed fall of Egypt with group dedicated to Islam’s global spread

This past weekend, the London Telegraph reported the U.S. embassy in Cairo in 2008 helped a young dissident attend a U.S.-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

Read more: U.S. ‘held secret meeting with Muslim Brotherhood’ http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=258405#ixzz1ClVkLy45
===========================================================
Its been a whirlwind of activity for Obama,and in 2009 he
had members of the Muslim Brotherhood visit the WH!!

Alot of dots need to be connected.

There is a ton of activity going on with Team
Hopey/Changey/In CoHoots with the Axis me thinks!!

Stories out there today how AQ wants to attack Wall Street executives. Comments sections at every story had people rooting them on. Democrats should feel proud their efforts at demonizing Wall Street are paying dividends.

JammieWearingFool on February 1, 2011 at 9:28 PM

Seriously…we need barges to ship ‘em out.They could care less of their own retirement investments? Jobs? Last time the NYSC shut down was because of 9/11.

I hear there are pirates hijacking cargo ships. Coordinates, please!!!

Yeah, Al Qaeda is always on the verge of a bomb. That is what the headlines read 9 years ago. But as time goes by, their attacks become ever more amateurish – some even incorporate underwear. They started with planes, went to trains, then to buses, then to cars, then to shoes, and finally to Fruit of the Loom. Notice the pattern?

Sure, they’ll get it right one day. But the headlines will never be a precursor to that.

It is not an uncontrolled fission reaction the way a true NUKE goes exponential, releasing atomic bond energy resulting in a mushroom cloud.

A dirty bomb just spews radioactive material by means of conventional explosives. The damage it intends to do is not a infrastructural type if damage. Its designed to contaminate an area. Not that that is any less scary—but its not a nuke.

Will they be carefully enough to protect themselves from the radiation. Most likely not and all who come in contact with the device will die before they can even launch it. There might be a hut somewhere that has a shiny box with излучения on it and 50 skeleton scattered around it.

This picture was taken from RB-26 at about 40,000 ft. a few minutes after zero hour. The fireball/mushroom cloud had quite a variety of condensation structures associated with it. At various stages of its life it had 4 condensation rings, 3 ice caps, 2 skirts, and 3 bells. In this picture 3 ice caps and 2 rings are seen.
———————————–

“Border guards (in Bulgaria) seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military – after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb.”

and SarahCuda,gives the green light to nuclear
carpet bombing between Afghany-Stan,and Puck-E-Stan,

take`n it to AQ and the Tolly-E-Bon!!(snark).

canopfor on February 1, 2011 at 9:15 PM

As a supporter of Palin I refudiate your insane tough guy comment. It’s the kind of comment which, if believed, will ensure she will never get elected. She would not murder innocent people. She would respond with an intelligent, measured response. If America responds to a dirty bomb with nuclear weapons, it had better kill every Muslim on earth. If it did either it would no longer be America.

As a supporter of Palin I refudiate your insane tough guy comment. It’s the kind of comment which, if believed, will ensure she will never get elected. She would not murder innocent people. She would respond with an intelligent, measured response. If America responds to a dirty bomb with nuclear weapons, it had better kill every Muslim on earth. If it did either it would no longer be America.

Basilsbest on February 1, 2011 at 10:56 PM

Speaking of which did you see the fake story that Rachel Maddow thought was real? She mocked it… It was hilarious because it was an Onion type spoof and she is so deranged she believed it!

It doesn’t have to be a dirty bomb. Once you collect up enough nuclear material, you can simply put it in a pile in a warehouse somewhere. Once the meltdown hits the water table, it can render an area the size of New York City uninhabitable.

The direct casualties would probably be minimal, but trying to evacuate and decontaminate a major city… With only three of those things they could displace 15% of the US population.

Speaking of which did you see the fake story that Rachel Maddow thought was real? She mocked it… It was hilarious because it was an Onion type spoof and she is so deranged she believed it!petunia on February 1, 2011 at 11:02 PM

I didn’t. I love the Onion. The big differences between the Onion and MSNBC is that the The Onion is a spoof – and more believable.

al Qaeda, back when it had a bit more coherence, tried to do their big terror operations (the ones after large targets or multi-attacks on the same day) via a system that was three part:

1) A team sent in to case the objectives. They were generally ment to be under the guise of tourists or other such things, just taking happy-snaps and getting some basic INTEL on some of the likely methods of attack and what their obstacles would be. There is evidence of this in the USS Cole and African Embassy bombings. These would also be the people who would make initial safe-house contacts for the follow-on teams. In general they were supposed to leave before the event took place and be unknown to the next team.

2) Operational Team – these are the people who come in, infiltrate, set up shop, and get INTEL from the first team. There tended to be some overlap between their time periods for staying in a Nation, and comms went through a higher-up in al Qaeda, so as to buffer the teams from each other. This didn’t always work out so well as some operatives knew each other from pre-aQ days and kept track of each other on that basis.

3) Clean-up – the team sent in to get rid of evidence, sell off or destroy any left-overs, and generally close-off the system. This they were horrible at as the response of authorities was usually too fast to be handled by these teams. In general they were the first expense item on the terror budget to be cut as they required their own compartmentalized comms system and had compromising information on the Operational Team. There is some evidence of such a team in operation after the USS Cole attack and one higher-up caught out fleeing Kenya after the Embassy bombings, but only the former worked well due to the number of Yemenis in aQ.

After the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq the ability of aQ, central, to do this sort of thing deteriorated. Their affiliate network in Algeria, Indonesia and Philippines retained some of that capability, but that was lost after Madrid, the capture of their Indonesian affiliate leader and the COIN done in the Philippines against the aQ backed Moro group.

Can aQ still pull off something like a dirty bomb?

Yes. After 9/11 there were rumors of one 707 vintage aircraft in Africa owned by aQ as well as one or more cargo vessels operating in the Indian Ocean. Our cargo container security system sucks like an Electrolux, to this day. Name a well populated city with a nearby harbor that takes in cargo containers and could have a remotely operated radionucleotide release system and you can figure out what the scale of this sort of an attack would be as you don’t need a bomb to scatter radionucleotids. A bomb limits the exposure to immediate blast radius and some downwind areas… an airborn venting system going along a mile or two of waterfront and then doing a final explosive release would be much, much worse as rescue teams would get irradiated coming to the blast zone.

Then when their stock portfolios cratered in the aftermath, those same idiots would be standing around looking more confused than usual blaming the “inherent failures” of capitalism. Bishop on February 1, 2011 at 9:36 PM